Red Dead Redemption 2, a Wild West video game sadly bereft of Will Smith, provides detailed vistas, shrinking horse balls, and the opportunity to blow up the KKK. What it does not provide, however, are decent controls.

The blame for some of the Red Dead Redemption 2 fails circulating online can reliably be placed upon the game’s cinematic mode, which displays the game in the way I imagine John Wayne saw the world. This mode cuts crucial aspects of the environment out of frame for the aesthetic, enabling players to be blindsided by trains or themselves blindside innocent pedestrians.

However, one of the most prominent instigators of these moments of utter buffoonery has been the game’s controls.

Red Dead Redemption 2 controls, which are a hot mess, are collateral damage to the volume of options with which developer Rockstar has furnished the game. It attempts to cram a very large number of interactions into a very small selection of buttons, which means that, sometimes, lifting a tree trunk off a man and robbing one of the guys trying to help him are literally the same button.

It is incredibly easy to accidentally shoot, manhandle or otherwise assault everyone and anyone, from harmless citizens to farmyard animals.

This might be less of an issue if you’re playing as a devil-may-care, lawless crime gremlin who delights in chaos and destruction. But I am but a gentle mountain man, trying to make his way in this harsh world, and I have accidentally punched my loyal steed Horseface more times than I feel good about. Frankly, I’m astounded he hasn’t just abandoned me in the middle of nowhere while I traipse off to pick oregano.

The controller confusion is not limited simply to cowboy-on-horse violence. Red Dead Redemption 2 has also made firing your gun an easy one-button press of the right trigger. The left trigger, meanwhile, is used for interacting with basically everything else.

Every action, from talking to people to riding your horse, is rife with the danger that you may unintentionally stumble into a slapstick comedy, only with less comical surprise and more straight up murder.

I went into Red Dead Redemption 2 thinking I was going to be an honourable mountain man who helps grateful ranchers and then rides off into the sunset, hat tipped and a sprig of wheat between my teeth. Instead, I am a human disaster. No wonder I’m living on the outskirts of society.